Making the most of what’s available to you may seem like an obvious thing to do, but with access to so many resources, it is sometimes hard to use everything to its full potential. Queen Mary for Film Studies has a plethora of DVDs and cinematic history books available in the library, all there to help further your education. Being a part of the University of London also means there are opportunities to join and enter other university libraries with great resources, such as the British Library and Senate House library – both in Central London. As a film student you have access to the Reuben Library at the BFI on Southbank, which has a massive archive of research, journals and access to articles spanning decades (it’s also a great cafe area to study!).
If you do miss a screening, the library has a selection of DVDs available, so you can catch up on what you missed, or simply find a film you fancy watching. There's also a set section called the ‘Teaching Collection’ area of the library which covers books and essays that will be covered in the modules – it usually is a quick search to find what you need and then you're sorted. It's a very easy system to use! If you don’t have your own PC there are plenty of computers to go around, and it also means you don't have to carry your laptop from A to B and back again.
Making the most of the literature on offer to you is ideal for furthering your learning – although it all may seem like a heavy workload and endless reading. The best you can do is have as many viewpoints and explanations as possible, then figuring out from there what your own understandings or thoughts are.
There’s also access to online documents, essays and articles from the online library resources and Jstor which has lots of pieces on films, history and many other topics.
You can join a weekly writing workshop to help plan out essays. Make the most of the options available to you for the best academic experience possible, and to make the most of your own knowledge and bandwidth with trickier topics you may not have thought of or covered previously.